Monday, October 17, 2016



If she deny, Lord Hastings, go with him,
And from her jealous arms pluck him
perforce.

-Duke of Buckingham

King Richard the Third                   Act III, scene i    Line 35

Today, not only are we back at Richard III, we’re back in act three, scene one only fifteen lines from where we were last month. In that post (9/10) we were hearing from young Edward V who was entering London, assumedly to be crowned king, and wondering where his mother and brother were. They were hiding, because the mom know what was up with Richard’s plans for her two sons (not good). Well we’ve only slid down fifteen lines and now we hear that Lord Cardinal and Lord Hastings are going to be sent to go get that other brother (apparently they don’t need the boys’ mother, the one with the jealous arms). The two boys, sons of the king who just passed away, are going to be locked in the Tower of London and no one will ever be seeing them again. In fact, there’s quite a few stories, maybe legends, of exactly where these two ended up. Suffice it to say that their gooses got cooked.

So, what’s our take-away from this line? Get the kid and don’t take no for answer and use force against the mother if you need to. And apparently Lord Hastings is the strong arm here. Nice people, huh?

Well I’ve been to this Tower of London place, not inside, but I’ve seen it from the outside. We were in London for a few days and I ended up taking a real long walk, through Hyde Park, past Buckingham Palace and Parliament, over the bridge and past the London Eye, along the south bank of the Thames for a few miles, back across the river on the Tower Bridge, and that got me to the Tower of London. And it’s not a tower, it’s more of a fort. Maybe there’s a tower inside the walls. But I didn’t go inside to pluck any kid from any jealous arms, so I’m not sure if there’s really a tower or not. But I am pretty sure those kids are not there these days. At least that’s what I hear.


I saw this building on the south bank of the Thames on my walk that day. Know what it is?

3 comments:

Mrs Blue said...

Wait, is that the tower in the picture or not? I really want to go the tower but that doesn't look very grim like I expected.

Mrs Blue said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Pete Blagys said...

No, it's not the tower, it's the Globe theater.

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